Victoria Fedden - This Is Not My Beautiful Life

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To my parents

Without their sacrifices, none of this would be possible

This memoir is a true story, though most names and some details have been changed.

When the Feds raid your house (or my parents house, in this case), they like to take you by surprise. Theyll come before sunrise and catch you in bed. Of course I didnt know that, so when the doorbell rang politely, I thought that my husband, Ben, who had just left for work, had probably forgotten something. I tossed on a T-shirt and shuffled, yawning, down the grand marble staircase to unlock the glass front doors.

I didnt know they were the Feds. I guess when I imagined DEA agents, I pictured a SWAT team with guns, but the group of men and women assembled under my parents porte cochere looked like bouncers just off work from a nightclub. Guys with shaved heads and goatees, and a couple of butchy-looking women who wore T-shirts and cargo pants and carried no visible weapons. Visible being the key word.

Robbers, I thought. Thieves cased out fancy waterfront neighborhoods, and a Mediterranean-style McMansion like my parents, with a Bentley and a tricked-out Escalade in the driveway, plus a forty-two-foot cabin cruiser docked in the back, was a sure target. They were going to force their way in, tie us up, and demand the combination to the safe where my mom hid her diamonds. Or maybe they were going to kidnap me for ransom. For years my sister Ashley and I had feared that one of the shady characters my parents always seemed to have hanging around would try something like that, so I didnt open the door, and I contemplated running upstairs to my parents room to wake them and their 130-pound Doberman. But I wasnt really thinking clearlyId just woken up. Also, I wasnt wearing any pants.

One of the men shook some papers, and then, all at once, they flashed their badges. I wondered how many times theyd practiced this routine, because Olympic synchronized swimmers couldnt have done it with better timing.

POLICE! one of them said through the glass.

SEARCH WARRANT!

I twisted the dead bolt open and let them in. I obviously didnt have a choice.

Im pregnant! I blurted.

A couple of the guys snickered.

Obviously, I heard one of them say.

The guy with the papers demanded to know if I was Cecily Gold.

I looked at him, confused.

Are you her? he asked again.

I shook my head, trying to think of what the right thing to say was, but the only thing that came to me was anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law .

No, I said, Im her daughter.

Is she here? he wanted to know.

Honey, who is it? my stepdad, Joel, called down from the east wing of the house. I took a deep breath.

The police! I called back.

Is Cecily here? the cop repeated.

Well be right down! Joel yelled.

Im not wearing any pants, I mumbled.

I tugged my T-shirt down over my pregnant belly, trying to cover my thighs and my enormous maternity panties.

Let me take you to get dressed, one of the women said. She had a mullet.

Oh, Im fine, I said. I can go by myself.

No, Ill have to accompany you, she said. She sounded pretty firm about it.

She followed me up the curving staircase, down the catwalk, and into the guest bedroom where my husband and I had been staying for the past two months while we waited for the renovations to be completed on the house wed bought. Wed hoped theyd be done by the time the baby came, but at the rate things were going, the house might be ready by her eighth-grade graduation.

I dont live here, I said. I mean, my husband and I, we dont live here. Were just staying here temporarily while were waiting for our house to be done, and all our stuff is crammed into one room.

I gestured toward a folding table wed set up against one wall and the stacks of building permits, plans, and blueprints shuffled on top of it.

The woman nodded. Just get dressed, honey.

I closed the door of the walk-in closet behind me. Right away she opened it, mumbling something that sounded like policy or procedure while I threw my husbands gray Miami sweatshirt over my tee and pulled on a pair of leggings.

How far along are you? she asked.

Thirty-seven weeks, I said.

She made a face that I interpreted as alarmed. I figured she was worried I might go into labor at any second and totally jack up the whole raid.

Ill need that cell phone, she said.

Oh, um, I was just trying to text my husband to let him know what was happening.

Sorry, she said, grabbing the iPhone from my hand and shutting it off before I could hit send.

Look, whatever this is, I have nothing to do with it, I tried to tell her.

She kind of half-assedly apologized. No one wants to be nasty to a pregnant woman, not even the Feds.

By the time we got back downstairs, my parents had gotten out of bed and were speaking with the officers, my mom still braless in her leopard-print silk pajamas, her waist-length (thanks to extensions) ponytail wound up in a hot-pink scrunchie. The dogs were going ballistic, and Joel was yelling at them to shut up while trying to explain to the officers that the Doberman was a teddy bear and the yappy mini pin was really the one to worry about, even though he weighed less than ten pounds. At least he had actually bothered to get dressed. Joel was in his red-and-black Nike gym gear, as if he expected the raid to be over in time for his eight A.M . with his trainer at LA Fitness.

The Feds were asking about guns and drugs. Seriously? Guns and drugs? My parents didnt have any guns or drugs, but to my surprise my stepdad produced a handgun from the sideboard beside the living room fireplace and then dug out a rolled-up Ziploc of weed from a box on top of the ornate mahogany bar. I always thought that box contained mixed nuts.

Medical marijuana. I have a prescription in California. I can show it to you. I have anxiety, he explained.

I wanted to roll my eyes. Everyone who knows Joel knows that the man has never been nervous a day in his life. Once, on the way home from one of his numerous trips to California, the plane he was on experienced serious mechanical malfunctions and had to make an emergency landing. Later, when it was over, I asked him if he had been scared at all, and what it was like to almost die? But he just shrugged it off.

If its my time, its my time, hed said.

Maybe this was because hed already been dead. When he was nineteen, hed been shot twice through the chest during a robbery at a nightclub in New Jersey, and had been revived at the scene.

For the next two hours, I had to sit my enormously pregnant ass on my parents living room sofa, without my cell phone, while these strangers stomped through the house in their boots and tight tees. Whatever it was they were searching for, it wasnt the gun or the pot. The agents had waved those aside.

You can keep your toy gun and your dime bag. Were looking for something bigger than that.